Within two bites it became clear that I had never eaten real chili before. Up to that point, I'd eaten from cans labeled "chili" that contained pasty maroon Alpo. But this luscious meat porridge—rich like a consommé and opaque like cocoa—had texture. Cumin-infused sirloin melted like a pork rib. A crumbly sponge of cornbread wicked up the broth, turning the edges orange with chili oil. But I will never have that chili again, and neither will anyone.

Under a sprawling copper squid in the Pike Place Market atrium, a neon sign has gone dark: "World Class Chili," it used to glow. Dozens of customers lined up outside the door on a frigid Friday afternoon—one day before the lights went out on December 20—for a farewell cup.

Elena Maldonado stood behind the counter ladling out the famous mahogany brew of meat and spices. She was the shop's last employee. The owner's recent fatal snorkeling expedition, culinary pessimism, and an unintended consequence of the Pike Place Market levy all conspired to sound this chili counter's death knell. Maldonado was left as the last person who knows the famous chili recipe—committed to memory—but she loves the dead owner too much to share it.

"A lot of people want to buy the recipe," says Maldonado, 27, who speaks softly and gives out smiles like gold stars. "No, that is Joe's recipe," she says. "He never wanted to give it out. It's a secret."

In the 18 years since Joe Canavan opened the shop, he developed a legion of fans who came in as much for him and Maldonado as they did for the chili. Bruce Phipps had driven through the snow from Shoreline to buy a gift certificate for his wife's Christmas stocking—as he has every year for over a decade—only to find the shop would close the next day.

"He was the most unique individual I have ever been around," Phipps said. "This was his domain." If you were a customer, Canavan wanted to know your life story, he said; if not, what the hell were you doing there? "You better not be coming in here to take a napkin or sit in one of those booths that are his," Phipps said, "or he would chase you out."

Maldonado worked side by side with Canavan for eight years—less a few months in 2006 when the shop closed for her to have a baby and Canavan to recover from hip-surgery complications. "When he came back, he showed me the recipe," she says. She has mastered it, regulars say. After Canavan died in November—at the age of 78, he was snorkeling for the first time on Maui and apparently suffered a stroke or heart attack—Maldonado flew solo for five weeks. She would arrive at 7:30 a.m. six days a week to begin the three-hour process to make the four types of chili, and she served it until the shop closed at 3:00 p.m.

But his widow, Dorothy Canavan, won't let Maldonado keep the shop open. "She said she can't run the business," Maldonado says. But others in the Market say Maldonado could run the business on her own—she practically already does.

"Everybody thought she"—Maldonado—"was going to take over," Phipps says. Bob Kerschner, an employee of Undercover Quilts, says, "I have heard that his wife was afraid that if it were left open, it may harm Joe's reputation if the chili wasn't as good." (Dorothy Canavan didn't return calls by press time.)

Kerschner also joins widespread speculation that renovations to the Market—which Canavan fought to block—will irreparably harm all the businesses in the Pike Place Market's atrium. According to a new design, approved in the recently passed Pike Place Market levy, a ramp leading down from the main level of the Market to the atrium's lower floor will be demolished and a bank of public restrooms will be placed directly in front of the chili shop. "That was probably going to hurt the business," says Kerschner. But it's bountifully evident that regulars' appetites would not be suppressed by a mere less-than-savory view.

I asked Maldonado to serve her favorite, and she gave me a bowl of the Cincinnati-style chili: ground beef and pork, seasoned with cinnamon and ground chocolate. She served it over—who knew this would be heaven in a cup?—macaroni.

"All I know is that this is the best damn bowl of chili I've ever had," said Jonathan Prive, hunkered over a bowl at the counter.

Now the recipe leaves with Maldonado, who is left unemployed. She harbors no grudges against the Canavan family for closing the store, nor the Market for threatening to put toilets out front, nor does she pine to open a new store with the recipe. "I want to use the recipe, but for family or Canavan's wife. I want sometime I can cook for her," she says.